


Shoot

by FastestKeyboardTyperInTheWest



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil
Genre: Art, Drunkeness, M/M, idk the sort of things you get with grantaire, might make all these fics into a verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-27
Updated: 2013-02-27
Packaged: 2017-12-03 20:08:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FastestKeyboardTyperInTheWest/pseuds/FastestKeyboardTyperInTheWest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The bullet wound, hard and cold in his side. He doesn’t mention it. Never will. It is a secret thing, beyond anyone’s comprehension of him. He doesn’t mind and he doesn’t care.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shoot

The bullet wound, hard and cold in his side. He doesn’t mention it. Never will. It is a secret thing, beyond anyone’s comprehension of him. He doesn’t mind and he doesn’t care. 

It is from his youth, on hardened streets, a knife flat and thin in his pocket and his eyes slitted and shifty. He was part of The Gang. Ten youths, hand picked for their hatred and cruelty. To inspire fear and anguish into the toffs that lived in the suburbs. Founded to bring old fashioned New York mob shit into London. Stupid stuff, idiotic shit that resulted in drink and drug and angry, mean paintings that got him a A in his art GCSE. And the bullet wound. 

 

He still has the small piece of metal, fired from a gun of some non-descript type and imbedded somewhere below. He can't remember the details exactly, but there were some very stereotypical bright lights and a move away from the squalid residence of his friends; he wonders what has happened to them. He holds the bullet between his fingers and twists it blankly in his grasp. He does it briefly and often; sometimes he even takes it to his lectures, fingers it through his pocket as he listens to whatever crap the art history teaching this week. He finds it almost ironic how, for such a part of himself he wishes to keep hidden, he exposes it. Then again, cynisism and irony are embedded in his veins and it would be stupid to stop that now.

 

It is kept in the bottom drawer along with many other things, all unsavoury and not for any eyes, especially Enjolras, because he's practically the only one who ever comes round there. He doesn't stay long but it's the thought that counts. A few needles and ink are in there, along with some photos and his old balaclava, stained with blood and spray paint. A hidden drawer for a hidden past, he muses, as he flicks the bullet in there after a long, hard and boring day in class. There is some kind of substance growing on a needle. He should throw it out. He makes a note of it. The drawer is closed again. 

 

One day, on a whim, he decides to try and draw when he was shot. How he's going to do it, he doesn't know, but he will. He's halfway drunk and right now, it's a good idea. He pulls up a canvas half buried under bottles and grabs a few dried up and barely usable paints from a few years past. First red : blood, anger, hatred. Then black : night, death, the colour of that bullet and that gun. Then white : white light before his eyes. Then a slash of half pink and half white : flesh, wound, heal. Then gold : recovery. He has no formulae for them to fit into, no sketch to replicate. It is chaos and cruelty and _**good**_. By the end of the night, he has a piece. Half his flat is trashed with paint and from the time he tipped it over, and the piece itself has a little beer on it's front, but he's quite pleased with it. Signing it sloppily, he goes to bed, content with a bit of half-assed work. 

 

A few months later, he submits it into a gallery showing: on a whim. He doesn't think it'll get in. Because it's crap. Utter bullshit. Complete and total crud. It won't even be returned to him: they'll rip it up and put it in the bin because it's such a travesty. So when it gets in and they request that he give it a name he's so surprised he actually falls off his chair, much to Courf's amusement. He takes the bullet with him, heavy in his pocket as he enters, and as they stand in front of the painting, hung up proudly in the corner of the gallery, Enjolras asks him what it's name is. 

'You haven't told me. I sort of expected you too?' Grantaire refrains from making a sarcastic comment on how wonderful Enjolras could have easily found out the information by checking the website, but then he remembers what a git Enjolras can be, behind the intelligent and handsome exterior.

'Gunshot,' he says simply, and walks off, towards a very pretty girl holding out a drink and a good night to him. 

 

_Enjolras finds out the meaning behind it eventually. It's very early in the morning and Grantaire's been barfing for nearly half an hour. After a heavy night of drinking, he's in the stage of alternating between being sick and laughing hysterically and then almost sobbing and then repeating it. He hates this part of the night. (Well, he hates all of Grantaire's drinking but that's another kettle of fish altogether). He has a number of protests to plan tomorrow, and looking after someone who- he's not sure what he is, actually. Well, it annoys him, but now Grantaire has stopped being violently sick and is looking at him, a little shiny thing in his fingers._

_'Enjolras,' he says, pronouncing it with fevered reverance, 'did you know I got shot once?'_

 

_He shakes his head. When Grantaire finishes telling his story and is passed out on the bed, he replaces the bullet into the drawer, closes it and leaves the flat. He'd known from first the painting and Courfeyrac, and heard it a few times over from inhebriated men._

 

_But he recognises when someone needs to vent their deep, dark secrets, ones they can't tell anyone. He respects that. That's possibly the only reason he looks after Grantaire in such a condition._

 

_He would not like the man to hate himself by telling any other._


End file.
